Work Highlights U.S. Military Technology Efforts

DoD News, Defense Media Activity

WASHINGTON, May 22, 2015 – America’s defense companies and employees provide the capabilities, technologies, and services that underpin the nation’s global military power, Deputy Defense Secretary Bob Work told industry representatives yesterday, according to a DoD news release.

Work spoke at the Aerospace Industries Association's 70th Annual Spring Board of Governors and Membership Meeting in Williamsburg, Virginia.

The deputy defense secretary talked to roughly 160 defense industry representatives about U.S. technological superiority, partnerships, and budgetary challenges, according to the release.

Boosting Military Technological Superiority

Work highlighted the department's ongoing efforts to reverse the erosion of U.S. military technological superiority, to include: the Defense Innovation Initiative, Third Offset Strategy, Long-Range Research & Development Planning Program, Better Buying Power 3.0 and Defense Innovation Unit Experimental, the release said.

He noted the importance of industry and how defense companies and employees provide the capabilities, technologies, and services that underpin America's global military power, according to the release.

Turning to the defense budget, the deputy defense secretary explained that a return to sequestration funding levels would be an unmitigated disaster and that lower funding levels are harmful to national security, the release said. The department, Work said in the release, needs a long-term budget approach that dispels sequester, once and for all, and provides the department flexibility in making needed cost saving reforms.

Work repeated Secretary of Defense Ash Carter's criticism of the overseas contingency operations mechanism for circumventing spending caps as a “gimmick” that fails to resolve the funding crisis facing the department, according to the release.

He asked industry to continue to work together, and with Congress, to address the negative effects of both sequestration and relying on an Overseas Contingency Operations mechanism to fund the base budget, the release said.

Work said the department will get through this time of declining budgets and increased demands, according to the release, by working together with industry and keeping our minds on the men and women who serve.

The deputy defense secretary ended remarks by thanking the defense industry for its contributions to national defense, the release said.

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